Former President George W. Bush, receiving the SMU John Goodwin Tower Center Medal from SMU President R. Gerald Turner at a ceremony in 2010, says the more people know about his policy institute, the more they'll see it's an asset to the community.

But the George W. Bush Presidential Center also has its campus critics.

Years ago, more than 100 professors publicly opposed the university’s pursuit of the center. Some faculty members say they still have concerns about SMU’s link to a polarizing presidency and its policy institute, a think tank.

The Rev. William McElvaney, one of the first faculty opponents, said he believes SMU “acquiesced to money over morals.”

McElvaney, professor emeritus of the Perkins School of Theology, said a Methodist university should not host an administration that invaded Iraq and used harsh interrogation techniques considered by some to be torture.

For faculty critics, the main concern was — and is — the center’s policy institute. The George W. Bush Institute, which began operating in November 2009, is independent of university control. The institute’s board includes Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove and other Bush political advisers.

“You’re talking about profound influence … how money operates to shape academic discourse and education,” said Rhonda Blair, former faculty senate president. “That would be true if it were Obama’s library coming here.”

For SMU President R. Gerald Turner, the academic value of the Bush Library, museum and archives outweighed controversy about the president’s legacy and institute.

Turner said in a recent interview that his experiences with presidential libraries convinced him SMU would benefit from the Bush Center’s “huge treasure-trove of research materials.”

He was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin when Lyndon Johnson chose the campus for his presidential library. The agreement prompted protests fueled by another unpopular war: Vietnam.

“It went from being political to being history, and people now are interested in studying that very difficult, volatile time as scholars,” Turner said. “And that really convinced me that the same thing would happen here.”

In a recent interview with The Dallas Morning News, George W. Bush said he was not surprised by the faculty debate.

“I can understand there were concerns that we would take this facility and convert it into a training ground for highly partisan people,” he said. “The more that both supporter and critic alike know about what we’re doing, see what we’re doing … they’ll say, ‘Well, this is a very constructive addition to this community.’”

In December 2000, on the morning after the U.S. Supreme Court declared Bush the nation’s 43rd president, Turner walked into the office of Thomas Barry, SMU’s vice president for executive affairs, and asked him a prophetic question: “What do you know about presidential libraries?”

“He said, ‘I don’t know anything about presidential libraries,’” Turner recalled. “And I said: ‘Wrong answer, Dr. Barry. You’re going to become an expert on presidential libraries, because we are going to go after his.’”

The conversation launched SMU’s hard-charging campaign. University officials began talking to the National Archives and Records Administration and staff at other presidential libraries. Soon, they appealed directly to the president.

Faculty opposition intensified in late 2006 after SMU’s student newspaper, The Daily Campus, published a strongly worded editorial by McElvaney and his faculty colleague, Susanne Johnson.

In 2007, Methodist ministers and church members circulated a petition, signed by about 4,000 people, calling on SMU to stop negotiations for the Bush Center. Another petition, signed by 120 current and retired professors, demanded the policy institute not be built on campus land, connected to the library and museum or formally associated with SMU.

History professor Benjamin Johnson began a blog tracking the debate and outlining concerns. Along with risk of political influence, he worried the Bush Center, a prominent and well-funded organization, would overshadow the university and distract from its academic mission.

Johnson, now at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, said SMU leaders framed the Bush Center as a silver bullet to make the university top-tier. “Their hopes for that were really utopian and misplaced,” he said.

Political science professor Cal Jillson said SMU should have pushed harder for an academic arrangement similar to those of the University of Texas and Texas A&M, the site of the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum. Both have public policy schools, which award degrees, not think tanks. “We could have bargained harder and argued with more clarity about which principles were at stake,” he said.

Turner assured faculty members that hosting the presidential center would not stifle academic freedom. A lease agreement also helped define the Bush Center-SMU relationship, such as requiring that faculty approve joint appointments with the school and institute. Three Bush Institute fellows have concurrent appointments at SMU.

“My goal is that the [SMU] administration remains attentive to the guidelines in the future,” said Dennis Foster, a former faculty senate president. “Inevitably, people forget.”

Time has eased some fears, said Bishop Scott Jones, an SMU trustee. The institute has largely steered clear of ideological topics, in favor of priorities such as education and human rights.

“People said during the debate they were afraid the institute would be run by Karl Rove, afraid it would tarnish the university,” he said. “None of those concerns came true.”

Rick Halperin, director of SMU’s human rights program, said the partnership seemed “a done deal” from the outset. “And those who opposed the library on our campus, what could anybody do?” he said.

“I hope, like everyone, it will be a valuable and objective resource,” he said. “But it’s too early to tell.”

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